PUBLISHED YEARLY FOR THE BROWN UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY ALUMNI NEWSLETTER
volume 21 ■ fall 2007 history newsletter contents chair’s letter ...... 2 faculty books ...... 5 new faculty ...... 8 faculty activities ...... 9 graduate program article .... 20 undergraduate program article ...... 23 NEWSLETTER
A WORD FROM THE (NEW) CHAIR
By way of introduction to you, the reader, I came to Brown in as Dean of the College (from the University of Wisconsin-Madison) and have been with the history department here since . For the past seven years, I have reported to you as director of undergraduate studies, a position I reluctantly surrendered to my most promising successor, Professor Nancy Jacobs. For most of my career, I have worked in ancient Greek history, with a specialty in historiography and intellectual history. In recent years, I have also taught and written in the field of American Transcendentalism. Emerson, I discovered, was largely a nineteenth century Neo-Platonist. Having been at Brown twelve years, I have only known two department chairs in History: Charles Neu and James McClain. From personal experience, I appreciate how difficult a position it is (everyone knows the definition of an academic department chair: someone who tries to herd cats) and was amazed that both my predecessors could each serve two terms. Charles retired a few years ago and received much deserved praise. Jim, who fortunately is remaining on staff, certainly deserves no less. Under his guidance, we have hired a large group of new colleagues in diverse fields and have added a number of equally distinguished faculty as joint appointments that are shared with other departments. He has led us in far-ranging discussions about our intellectual direction and in the design of new curricula for our undergraduate and graduate programs. The number of undergraduates taking our courses has never been higher and the quality of our graduate students never stronger. Just as Jim has left the department in good health, there are still many exciting challenges in front of us. Faced with a number of retirements of senior faculty, we will be making several replacements at the highest level, followed by a number of more junior appointments. This will certainly command much of our attention. This year saw the passing of long-retired Professor Emeritus Bryce Lyon. Said one of our colleagues: “Bryce was an erudite and prolific scholar and led the Brown History Department out on to the field the way the Gipper (the first one, not Reagan) led Notre Dame into battle against Michigan. God rest you, Bryce!” Many alumni/ae will remember Professor Lyon as a commanding presence in the classroom. “Our Correspondent”—one of our own who wishes to remain anonymous—reports on the remarkable move of Peter Green House (known to older readers as the Lippit-Guild House). The purpose of the move, to the other side of Sharpe House, is to clear a path that will more easily connect Pembroke Campus to the Main Green. While this has forced half of us to take up not quite luxurious temporary quarters in a science building (Metcalf) that has seen better days (complete with a de-tox shower in the bathroom!), it has served the inevitably positive purpose of making us pack up all our belongings and (perhaps) discard
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some of our accumulated debris. “History on the Move” is our captioned title of the picture of Green House. Embracing the new as well as the past sustains thriving individuals, and departments, too. Also noteworthy in these pages is a lamentably, but necessarily for copyright reasons, all too brief excerpt from Gordon Wood’s forthcoming work. The full piece, I assure you, is especially thought- provoking and well worth the read. At the end of this year, we will bid Professor Wood adieu after his thirty-eight years of teaching at Brown. His book of essays demonstrates that he has no intention of slowing down. Green House, however, has finally slowed down, and is now in place at our new address: Brown Street. Stop by and visit. Ken Sacks
Cover image: The Peter Green House Move By “Our Correspondent”
The main office of the Department of History, the Peter Green House, weighs an estimated tons.This factoid matters because in June and July, they picked it up and moved it. The university’s planned “Cross-Campus Walkway” required the site at Angell Street as open space, but the historic Peter Green House was deemed worth saving at an estimated cost of $ million, including renovations (according to the Providence Journal). The move entailed jacking the building off its foundations, inserting wheels beneath it, connecting three cables pulled by winches, rotating it degrees, and pulling it feet to the corner of Brown and Angell. In short, the Peter Green House moved from one side of Sharpe House (the yellow History Department building) to the other, but it now faces Brown rather than Angell.In Rhode Island parlance, it moved from next to where the Shell Station used to be to where the parking lot used to be. (The Shell Station was demolished in to make way for a big science building.)
The move created a modicum of excitement in our Department. Those with offices in the Peter Green House packed up and moved to temporary quarters in May. Faculty occupying Sharpe House remained in place and were treated in June to the sights and sounds of construction on both sides. Some faculty members, remarkably, retained their usual focus and were unmoved by the spectacle.Others approached it in ways not entirely unrelated to their professional work. Many documented the event with photographs. Several brought their children for the educational value. One historian, watching the preparatory work for weeks, devised life histories for the workers. An historian of science was particularly fascinated with the technology. A Department member with fieldwork experience managed, through patient habituation of the crew, to twice enter the site for up-close appreciation of the heavy machinery. For their part, graduate students dis cussed those developments visible from the “ivory cubby” on the top floor of Sharpe.
The big trucks are gone now. The Peter Green House stands high on temporary blocks, awaiting completion of the new foundation. The Pavilion Room and side porch nowgrace Angell Street, offering traffic an unfamiliar vista. The Department hopes to reoccupy the old house early next year.
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LETTER FROM GORDON WOOD
The following is a brief extract from Gordon Wood’s forthcoming book, The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Writing of History (Penguin Press, ). The columnist “Bagehot” in a recent issue of the British magazine The Economist suggested that in British eyes both the people of the United States and their president were “too bombastic, myopically self-assured, lacking a tragic view of life.” This is a common European view of Americans. But what does it mean to lack a tragic view of life, and what does such a tragic view have to do with the discipline of history? When properly understood, history lends itself to a tragic view of life. A tragic view of life does not mean a sad or pessimistic view of life; instead, it means a sense of the limitations of life. Most Americans, however, are not very historically minded and thus most lack a tragic view of life, meaning most do not possess a very keen sense of the limitations of life. This is not a partisan issue. In this respect Michael Moore is no different from George W. Bush. Of course, for the most part the lack of a sense of the limitations of life is an asset, since this is what makes us Americans such an optimistic and go-getting kind of people. But it also tends to make us brash and arrogant, full of confidence in our ability to change the world and control our destinies. History as a discipline tends to counter these tendencies of arrogance and overconfidence. By describing with sympathy the blindness and folly of people in the past, by recognizing the extent to which they were caught up in changing circumstances over which they had little control, and by realizing the degree to which they created results they never intended, history as a discipline tends to create skepticism about our ability in the present to manipulate the future; in place of imperiousness it breeds humility and wisdom. Which in today’s world may not be such a bad thing.
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Recent Faculty Books
Omer Bartov, Erased: Carl F. Kaestle and Alyssa E. Vanishing Traces of Lodewick, eds., To Educate Jewish Galicia in a Nation: Federal and Present-Day Ukraine National Strategies of (Princeton University School Reform (University Press, 2007) Press of Kansas, 2007)
Howard Chudacoff, Anthony Molho and Children at Play: An Diogo Ramada Curto, eds. American History (New Finding Europe: Discourses York University Press, On Margins, Communities, 2007) Images (Berghahn Books, 2007)
Jorge Flores, Re-exploring Tara Nummedal, Alchemy the Links. History and and Authority in the Holy Constructed Histories Roman Empire (University between Portugal and Sri of Chicago Press, 2007) Lanka (Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz Verlag & Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 2007)
Tim Harris, Mark Goldie, James Patterson, Restless Stephen Taylor, Mark Giant: The United States Knights, and John Spurr, from Watergate to Bush v. eds., The Entring Book Gore (Oxford Press, pbk. of Roger Morrice 2007) 1677 –1691 (Boydell Press, 2007)
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Recent Faculty Books
Kurt A. Raaflaub, Josiah Paul Buhle, Tim Hector: A Ober, and Robert W. Caribbean Radical’s Story Wallace, Origins of (University Press of Democracy in Ancient Mississippi, pbk. 2006) Greece (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007)
Kurt A. Raaflaub (ed.), Paul Buhle, Jews and War and Peace in the American Popular Ancient World (Malden Culture, 3 volumes MA and Oxford: (Praeger/Greenwood, Blackwell Publishing, 2006) 2007)
Michael P. Steinberg, James Campbell, Judaism Musical and Middle Passages: Unmusical (University of African American Chicago Press, 2007) Journeys to Africa, 1787-2005 (New York: Penguin Press, 2006)
Vazira Zamindar, Deborah Cohen, The Long Partition Household Gods: and the Making The British and of Modern South their Possessions Asia: Refugees, 1830 –1945 (Yale Boundaries, Histories University Press, 2006) (Columbia University Press, 2007)
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Stephen Graubard, Ethan Pollock, Stalin Command of Office: and the Soviet Science How War, Secrecy and Wars (Princeton Deception Transformed University Press, 2006) the Presidency from Theodore Roosevelt to George W. Bush (BasicBooks, pbk 2006)
Tim Harris, Restoration: Naoko Shibusawa Charles II and His America’s Geisha Kingdoms 1660 –1685 Ally: Reimagining (Penguin, pbk 2006) the Japanese Enemy (Harvard University Press, 2006)
Tim Harris Michael Steinberg, Revolution: The Great Listening to Reason: Crisis of the British Culture, Subjectivity, Monarchy, 1685 –1720 and 19th Century Music (Penguin, 2006) (Princeton University Press, pbk 2006)
Evelyn Hu-DeHart and Michael Steinberg and Khun Eng Kuah, eds. Monica Bohm-Duchen, Voluntary Organizations eds., Reading Charlotte in the Chinese Diaspora Salomon (Cornell (Hong Kong University University Press, 2006) Press, 2006)
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Recent Faculty Books
Gordon Wood, Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different (Penguin, 2006)
New Faculty
ETHAN POLLOCK space, sexuality, hygiene, and the body in the joined the faculty in the context of social and political upheaval and fall of as an assistant change. He has held post-doctoral fellowships professor of history. His in the history of recent science (George book Stalin and the Soviet Washington University) and in Russian Studies Science Wars (Princeton (Columbia University). During his first year at University Press, ) used previously Brown he taught courses on Stalinism, the inaccessible Soviet archives to examine the USSR and the Cold War, and th Century interaction between politics, science, and Russia.He also delivered papers at the annual ideology during the last years of Joseph Stalin’s meeting of the American Association for the life and the first years of the Cold War. His Advancement of Slavic Studies in Washington, current research on the Russian bathhouse—or DC and at a conference in London, England on bania—explores questions of public and private Russia after the Second World War.
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Faculty Activities
ENGIN AKARLI was the Director of Graduate book, ERASED: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Studies in – . He oversaw the ongoing Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine, which will be transition to the department’s overhauled PhD published by Princeton University Press in program and its adaptation to the new policies October . A French translation of the book of the Graduate School. In addition he served will be coming out soon thereafter with Calman as the caretaker of the Middle East Studies Levi/Hachette. Bartov also went over and edited Concentration and continued to fulfill his duties the Hebrew translation of a previous book, The on the editorial boards of the International “Jew” in Cinema: From The Golem to Don’t Touch Journal of Middle East Studies and Islamic Law My Holocaust, which is scheduled for publication and Society. These administrative and editorial in Israel in December with Am Oved. tasks, combined with the responsibility of Bartov also continued to work on his history teaching around students, left little time for of the Eastern Galician town of Buczacz, and research. However, he managed to publish an traveled for that purpose to Ukraine, Austria, article on “Ottoman Encounters with the West” and Poland. While in Europe giving several and another on “Daughters and Fathers: invited lectures at such venues as the Simon The Experience of a Young Lebanese Wiesenthal Institute in Vienna, the Jewish Woman ( – ).” Historical Institute in Warsaw, the German Historical Institute also in Warsaw, the During the fall semester OMER BARTOV American Academy in Berlin, and the Centre taught two new and challenging courses: Marc Bloch also in Berlin, among others. Bartov A Freshmen Seminar on “The Holocaust in oversaw and participated in the final conference Historical Perspective,” and an upper level of the Borderlands Project, jointly organized by undergraduate seminar which he co-taught with the Watson Institute at Brown, the University of Thomas Kniesche of the German Department Minnesota, and the Herder Institute at the on “Stereotypes of Jews and Germans in University of Marburg in Germany, where the German and Israeli Film and Fiction.” During conference was held. the summer and fall Professor Bartov also participated in several conferences and gave PAUL BUHLE published Tim Hector: A Caribbean several lectures in such venues as London, Radical’s Story (Jackson: University of Mississippi Tübingen, Freiburg, Ljubljana, Belgrade, and and Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randall) in Fall ’ . Kiev. Bartov took part in the writing of the (Edited) Jews and American Popular Culture, report by the President’s Steering Committee volumes (Praeger/Greenwood, January, ’ ). on “Slavery and Justice” that was delivered to Essays published in volumes include, “Popular President Simmons at the end of the semester, Culture in the US,” in the Cambridge and is currently member of a committee Companion to American Culture; “Jewish appointed by Provost Kertzer to investigate ways Socialists” in New Jewish Time Jewish Culture of implementing the recommendations of the in a Secular Age An Encyclopedia View Slavery & Justice Committee. Professor Bartov (Hebrew, Tel Aviv). Essays on various subjects, spent the spring semester of as a fellow at mostly reviews, published in the following print the American Academy in Berlin. While there, and online sources: San Francisco Chronicle, completing the last remaining work on his new Jewish Currents, Tikkun, Rethinking Marxism, 9 history newsletter
Faculty Activities continued
CNS [Capitalism, Nature, Socialism], Science America that will appear in Imperial Subjects, and Society, Reviews in American History and forthcoming from Duke University Press. MR-ZINE. Invited lectures include: St Johns CAROLYN J. DEAN continues to serve as Antigua (Tim Hector Memorial Association, Associate Dean of the Faculty. Forthcoming are October), Workmens Circle, New York, “Against Grandiloquence: ‘Victim’s Culture’ and April, Toronto Jewish Film Festival (April). Jewish Memory,” in Warren Brenkman, Peter MC/Overview function at Students for a Gordon, Samuel Moyn, and Dirk Moses, eds. Democratic Society convention, Chicago, Charting Modernity: New Essays in Intellectual August; Movement for a Democratic Society, History and Critical Theory as well as “The New School, New York, February, and Open Secret: Affect and the History of American Jewish Historical Society, New York, Sexuality,” in a book edited by Peter Cryle and March. Events/programs at Brown University Christopher Forth. She gave invited talks at The organized: “Comics and Culture,” symposium Universities of Sydney and Queensland as well for April, with two days of lectures and events, as at Grinnell College. including the opening of the SDS Comics Show, a touring exhibit with its opening at A Conference on Greek History and the the JNBC. Historical Imagination, a Conference in Honor of CHARLES W. FORNARA was held at Brown HOWARD CHUDACOFF’S new book, Children Oct. – , . Apart from writing several At Play: An American History (New York reviews (of commentaries on Herodotus and University Press) was officially published August Ctesias of Cnidos) he is currently investigating . A feature article about the book appeared in some aspects of fifth century Athenian finance the Arts section of the New York Times on involving the analysis of one or two inscriptions August , and a formal review was published in (among them the well-known Kallias Decrees) the Sunday New York Times Book Review and a much-debated papyrus fragment (the September . He currently is on sabbatic leave so-called Strasbourg Papyrus). In the planning and beginning a new book project. stage is a book on Thucydides focusing on the DEBORAH COHEN’S book, Household Gods: speeches he attributes to the participants of the The British and their Possessions, was published Peloponnesian War (Pericles, Cleon, Alcibiades, by Yale University Press in the fall of and etc.) but most fundamentally concerned with won the Albion prize, awarded by the North the question of the dates of composition of the American Conference of British Studies to the various portions of his text. best book on Britain after . ABBOTT GLEASON published three essays: She is currently at work on a new book about “Totalitarismo”, “Hannah Arendt” and the history of family secrets. “Anticommunismo,” in Silvio Pons and Robert Service, eds., Dizionario del Communismo nel xx DOUGLAS COPE is currently working on a secolo, volumes, Einaudi, Turin, . Professor study of Mexico City’s “informal economy” in Gleason also participated in two conferences, the eighteenth century. He has also written an delivering papers at both: “Transitions to essay on race and identity in colonial Latin 10 volume 21 ■ fall 2007
Democracy during the Cold War,” in Transitions: turmoil and war. The majority were individuals A Historical and Comparative Analysis,” he knew well, and this will allow him to dwell sponsored by the Department of History, on those who figured as their friends but also University of Bologna and the Gramsci Institute, those who chose to be their critics and foes. Bologna, Italy, November – , and Professor Graubard will divide the book in six “The Cyril and Methodius Society and ‘Young parts, considering Franklin D. Roosevelt and Europe’”, Conference on the th Anniversary Harry S. Truman; Eleanor Roosevelt and of the Cyril and Methodius Society, Program in Dorothy Thompson; McGeorge Bundy and Ukrainian Studies, Columbia University, April Henry Kissinger; Raymond Aron and Isaiah , . There are plans for the publication of Berlin; John Hope Franklin and Ralph Waldo both sets of conference papers. Ellison; Richard Hofstadter and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and hopes to complete the MARY GLUCK received a Cogut Center research later this year in New York, expecting Fellowship for fall of and was on sabbatical to publish the book in . leave in the spring of . She spent most of the year continuing research on a book on Jewish As the Director of the Center for Latin American humor and popular entertainment in fin-de-siecle Studies at Brown University, Associate Professor Budapest. She presented papers on her new of Latin American History JAMES N. GREEN research at the Cogut Center in November developed several initiatives to expand the study and at an international conference on Jewish of Latin American and Caribbean history at Cosmopolitanism held in Budapest in May . Brown University as part of a four year She also gave papers on her work on Parisian Department of Education Title VI grant. These bohemia at the Nineteenth-Century French included the Brazil @ Brown Brazilian History Studies Conference in Bloomington, Indiana in Forum that brought seven prominent Brazilian October . Her book on Popular Bohemia historians to campus to present their research, will be published in a paperback edition by and a joint proposal of the History Department, Harvard and has been translated into Chinese. Africana Studies, the Center for Latin American Studies, the Center for the Study of Race and STEPHEN GRAUBARD spent half the last year Ethnicity in America, French Studies, Hispanic in England, in Pilton and London, the other Studies, and the John Carter Brown Library to half in New York, doing research for his new sponsor Adrián López Denis, an historian of book, tentatively entitled “Twelve Who nineteenth-century Cuba as a Cogut Center for Mattered and their Circles.” This is a the Humanities International fellow. Professor transformed version of the manuscript Graubard López Denis will be teaching courses on wrote about in the Brown History Newsletter Caribbean history during the / and last year. Graubard chose to write about twelve / academic years while at the Center for men and women, all important in quite different the Humanities. Green co-edited with Professor ways in the twentieth century whose careers Luiz Roniger of Hebrew University an issue of testify to the major intellectual, social, and Latin American Perspectives entitled “Political political revolutions that so fundamentally Exiles from Latin America” and published an changed the United States during this time of article “(Homo) sexuality, Human Rights, and 11 history newsletter
Faculty Activities continued
Revolution in Latin America,” in the collection at Merton College Oxford for the Trinity Term Human Rights and Revolutions, edited by of . Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, Lynn Hunt, Marilyn B. PATRICIA HERLIHY, Professor Emerita, feels her Young and Gregory Grandin. Green continues major accomplishment was to get her shoulder on-going international research collaboration healed. She also gave a public lecture at through the “The Terrains of History Project,” Emmanuel College in January on “Incredible in conjunction with Brown University’s Spatial Shrinking Russia: Why We Care.” and taught a Structures in the Social Sciences, Stanford course on historiography at the same college in University and the State University of the spring. Her book chapter, “Eugene Schuyler Campinas, that is mapping the social geography and the Making of the Bulgarian Constitution of nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro. He also ,” was published in Russia, Europe, and the organized the Third International Symposium Rule of Law, edited by Ferdinand Feldbrugge by on Brazilian History held at the Fundação Casa Brill Publishers At the eleventh annual world Rui Barbosa in Rio de Janeiro that brings convention of the Association for the Study of together scholars from the United States and Nationalities, held at Columbia University in Brazil working on Brazilian history. April, she was the discussant on four papers on TIM HARRIS spent the academic year – the the city of Odessa. She continues to work on as the Andrew Mellon Research Fellow at the her biography of Eugene Schuyler, an American Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington diplomat. She was happy to see several Brown D.C., where he undertook research on two history alums during the course of the year. books: a ‘Cultural History of Prejudice in Early EVELYN HU-DEHART was glad to return Modern England’ and a study of ‘The Stuart to Brown after spending a year as the Monarchs in an Age of Revolutions’. His The Distinguished Freeman Scholar of Diaspora Entring Book of Roger Morrice. Volume III: The Studies at the Center for the Americas of Reign of James II – (part of a six volume Wesleyan University in CT. In Hu-DeHart series co-edited with Mark Goldie and others) continued to publish in international venues and was published in July . His Revolution: The in languages other than English. In this regard, Great Crisis of the British Monarchy, – she published a book with Hong Kong (Penguin) appeared in paperback in the UK in University Press (Voluntary Organizations in January (the paperback will be released in the Chinese Diaspora) and an article in Spanish the US in January ), whilst his Restoration: in a leading Mexican history journal, ISTOR: Charles II and His Kingdoms, – won the Revista de Historia Internacional. The article John Ben Snow Foundation Prize for the best is entitled: “Opio y control social: culies en las book by a North American scholar in British haciendas de Peru y Cuba.” At the Center for Studies for . (He used the prize money to the Study of Race and Ethnicity, Professor buy a new guitar, he tells us.) Over the course Hu-DeHart continues to develop strengths in of the year he gave talks in Baltimore, Boston, Latino Studies. This year, the Center received a Leicester, Liverpool, Oxford, and Bangor large grant of $ , from the Rhode Island (Wales). He has been elected a visiting fellow
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Foundation to conduct an in-depth survey of RHETT S. JONES received the George T. Latinos in RI, CT and MA, as part of a larger Downing Award from the Rhode Island Black Latino National Survey of states and Heritage Society for his contributions to Washington, D.C., comprising over , education. He also received the Ochillo informants. When completed, this survey will award from the Southern Conference on constitute the first comprehensive baseline data Afro-American Studies for the best article in its on the largest growing ethnic segment of US journal, The Griot. The piece, “Geography society today. Nationally, Hu-DeHart serves as and the Slave Creation of Blackness in the a Trustee of the College Board, as well as on Americas,” is part of Jones’ on-going research the Executive Council of the American on the contributions of Natives and slaves to Studies Association. the idea of race. Already published is “Psyche and Society in the Slave Construction of Race” NANCY JACOBS has been elected to the in Western Journal of Black Studies. In press Executive Board of the American Society are “Black Resistance in the Americas before for Environmental History, and named to Blackness” (Journal of Black Studies); “Indian the program committee of the International Overseers and Black Agents” (in an anthology Consortium of Environmental History on the African Diaspora); and “Role of Blacks Organizations World Environmental History in the Construction of Race in the Americas” Conference to be held in Copenhagen (Transforming Anthropology). Jones continues Denmark in . Over the past year (which to write on relations between Native Americans went very quickly), she taught her usual and blacks. In an anthology on Afro-Americans complement of classes, served the department he recently published “Zambo Histories: and university on various committees and Studying Afro-Indians,” and in press with continued working on two publications Journal of African American History is “History projects, a source book on “Twentieth-Century of Afro-Indian History.” A Brown faculty grant Africa” and an environmental history of is enabling him to complete work on a new people and birds in sub-Saharan Africa. course (most) tentatively titled “Who KARL JACOBY devoted most of his time Constructed Race?” Jones was one of a small outside the classroom in to revising his number of scholars invited to participate in the manuscript on violence and memory in the Ford Foundation’s recent study of Black Studies. U.S.-Mexico borderlands, to be published in And he is one of those asked to serve on the by Penguin Press. He also published an editorial board of the newly organized Review of article entitled “Classifying Nature: In Search African American Studies. Just in case his former of a Common Ground Between Social and students might think he is someone other than Environmental History” in an anthology edited the professor who taught them, Jones wishes to by the former JCB fellow Ranjan Chakrabarti assure them that he still does lots of things and a brief review essay on African Americans’ wrong. Very wrong. relations with Mexico .
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Faculty Activities continued
Marking the retirement of University Professor for a UCLA / Hebrew College conference on CARL KAESTLE , a national conference, “‘The Blessing of Assimilation’” Reconsidered. sponsored by the Spencer Foundation and the An expanded version of this essay will soon Annenberg Institute for Education Reform at appear in the volume Rethinking European Jewish Brown, was held at the Faculty Club in June in History. Mandel also spoke on “The Holocaust in Providence. Participants addressed the theme: French Historiography: Trends and Observations” “Clio at the Table: The Uses of History in at the Lessons and Legacies Bi-Annual Conference Informing and Improving Education Policy.” in Claremont, California. Among the participants were [Named Chair] TONY MOLHO continued teaching at the emeritus Jim Patterson, and Adam Nelson, European University Institute, offering seminars Ph.D., xx, now Associate Professor at the on global history and the history of the seas. He University of Wisconsin. During the conference was appointed member of the newly created a group of Kaestle’s former students presented European Research Council. Two books of his him with the typescript of a book written in his were published early in : Firenze nel honor (and without his knowledge), entitled Quattrocento, vol I: Politica e Fiscalità (Roma, Rethinking the History of American Education, to Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura) Anthony Molho be published this fall by Routledge. A volume of and Diogo Ramada Curto (eds.) Finding Europe. the conference papers is also planned, to be Discourses on Margins, Communities, Images edited by Annenberg Professor Kenneth Wong (New York and Oxford, Berghahn Books) (Education and Political Science). In addition, Kaestle and ten postdoctoral fellows in the TARA NUMMEDAL returned from leave in the Advanced Studies Fellowship Program at Brown fall , having completed her manuscript, have completed a book entitled To Educate a Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire. Nation: Federal and National Strategies of School The book, which takes the problem of fraud as Reform, published by University Press of Kansas a point of entry into the practice of alchemy in in August, . Finally, Kaestle and co-editor early modern central Europe, will appear with the Janice Radway of Duke University have completed University of Chicago Press in October . final revisions on a book of essays entitled Print She also completed an essay, “On the Utility of in Motion: Publishing and Reading in the Alchemical Fraud,” which will appear in New United States, – , appear as Volume 4 Perspectives on Alchemy, edited by Lawrence of A History of the Book in America, published Principe (Canton, Mass: Science History by University of North Carolina Press in Publications, ). In the fall of , she spring, . turned to a new book project, presenting a paper at the annual New England Renaissance MAUD MANDEL continues to work on her Conference on the intersection of alchemy, book, Beyond Antisemitism: Muslims and Jews in gender, and apocalyptic theology in the life of the Contemporary France, a topic on which she gave sixteenth-century alchemist Anna Maria Zieglerin. numerous public presentations. In addition, she In the spring of , she took advantage of a presented a piece entitled, “Assimilation and sabbatical to write a chapter of this new book and Cultural Exchange in Modern Jewish History” take a short research trip to Dresden, Germany. 14 volume 21 ■ fall 2007
JAMES PATTERSON’S book, Restless Giant: reading courses on Latin historians. He The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore, participated in several conferences, gave lectures came out in paperback in . He continues to in various American and European universities, give talks here and there about his work, and to and made a trip to Japan, exploring monuments advise graduate students, one of whom, Richard and remains of early Japanese culture that has Canedo, received his PhD in . figured prominently in several comparative projects of the Program in Ancient Studies. KURT RAAFLAUB , as Director of the Program in Ancient Studies, organized, together with SETH ROCKMAN submitted his book David Konstan, a large interdisciplinary and manuscript Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, comparative conference on “Epic and History,” and Survival in the Early Republic City to Johns pursuing through many epic traditions (ancient, Hopkins University Press; presented papers at medieval, and more recent) the question of how Brandeis University, University of Connecticut, oral epic traditions that crystallize into written and Harvard University; and published an op-ed epic preserve or distort historical memory. in the Baltimore Sun. During the spring The conference was preceded by a lively semester, Rockman held a NEH Fellowship at undergraduate seminar and a faculty/graduate the American Antiquarian Society to research a student workshop on the same topic. Raaflaub new project on the trade in “plantation goods” published two books, one (edited) on War —the shoes, shirts, blankets, shovels, and hoes and Peace in the Ancient World, the other manufactured in the North for use on Southern (co-authored) on Origins of Democracy in and Caribbean slave plantations. Ancient Greece. He continues work on various In July, ROBERT SELF was promoted to research projects, one a historical and literary Associate Professor and is now the most recently commentary on Julius Caesar’s report on the tenured member of the department. He spent Roman civil wars of / BCE, another on early much of working on the program for Greek political thought in its Mediterranean the Organization of American Historians context. The latter investigates how political (OAH) annual conference, for which he was values and ideas common in earlier or program committee co-chair. He finished and contemporaneous Near Eastern civilizations submitted to Gender and History an article on might have influenced Greek political thinking anti-pornography and anti-gay politics in Los and in what ways the Greeks adapted and Angeles in the s and s. The article draws transformed such external impulses when they from his current book project on the politics of integrated them into their own culture. This gender and sexuality in the U.S. between summer Raaflaub will lead a Group UTRA and the early s. In the Fall, he participated project with the goal of assembling an annotated in a colloquium on poverty and public history source collection on “War and society in the held at the University of California, Berkeley. ancient world”, which will be useful for the In the Spring, he was awarded a Frederick course on the same topic he will teach again in Burkhardt Fellowship from the ACLS, a the fall. Otherwise he continues to teach Roman Fellowship at the Warren Center at Harvard, history, Greek political thought, and advanced and a Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. The 15 history newsletter
Faculty Activities continued
Burkhardt Fellowship will allow him to be on Monteverdi to Bourdieu (Cambridge: leave next year at the Radcliffe Institute for Cambridge University Press, ). Invited Advanced Study at Harvard. lectures, papers, and talks included “Hannah Arendt and the Cultural Style of the German NAOKO SHIBUSAWA’S book, America’s Geisha Jews,” Centennial Conference on Hannah Ally: Reimagining the Japanese Enemy, came out Arendt, Berlin, October ; a keynote address with Harvard University Press last December. She called “Daniel Barenboim’s Sound,” Department will be working on her new book, Seduced by the of German Graduate Student Conference, East: The Treason Trial of John David Provoo, University of Pennsylvania, February and while on leave during the – academic again as the keynote address of a conference year with a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship on Music and Spirituality, University of Foundation/Andrew W. Mellon fellowship. Amsterdam, June ; a paper called “Is KERRY SMITH continues to work on a Secular Judaism Unique?” at the conference book about the social and cultural histories in Honor of Charles Taylor, The New School, of the Great Kanto Earthquake of . He New York, May ; “The Politics of spoke on that topic at conferences at Brown, Dreaming.” Deutsche Oper Berlin Symposium the University of California, Berkeley and the on Zemilinsky, Berlin, June ; a paper called, Australian National University. He served on “Die Unfahigkeit zu Traumen,” [The Inability the University Steering Committee on Slavery to Dream], Conference “Angst vor der and Justice, and the Provost’s Committee on Zerstorung,” Bayreuth Festival, August . Internationalization, and is a member of The In July he was scholar in residence at Commission to Commemorate the History of the Aspen Musical Festival and Aspen Slavery in Rhode Island. Smith is also chair of Humanities Institute. the Department of East Asian Studies. MICHAEL VORENBERG published two essays, – was MICHAEL P. STEINBERG’S one in a collection about Reconstruction and sec ond year as director of the Cogut Center the other in a collection about Emancipation. for the Humanities at Brown. He completed In addition he presented two papers to be a book, Judaism Musical and Unmusical published in collections in ; both are works (University of Chicago Press, Fall ), and relating to his current book project on the impact published three articles: “Hannah Arendt of the American Civil War on citizenship. He and the Cultural Style of the German Jews,” won two teaching prizes: the William McLoughlin Social Research : ( ); “Migratory prize, for instruction in the social sciences, and Psychoanalysis,” in Federico Finchelstein, ed., the Karen T. Romer award, for undergraduate “Psychoanalysis North and South/Psicoanalysis advising and mentoring. Sur Y Norte,” special issue of Estudio GORDON WOOD was on leave during the Interdisciplinarios de America Latina y el Caribe fall term of – . In the spring term he : ( ); and “Fascism and the Operatic taught a lecture course on American Colonial Unconscious,” co-authored with Suzanne History and an undergraduate seminar on the Stewart-Steinberg, in Victoria Johnson and practice of history. In July he ran a week-long Thomas Ertman, eds., Opera and Society from 16 volume 21 ■ fall 2007
seminar on the era of George Washington for school teachers sponsored by the Gilder-Lehrman Institute, the seventh summer he has done so. During the course of the academic year he presented lectures to groups of both state and ✶ federal judges, including the Second Circuit and the Fifth Circuit, at a number of places: western Pennsylvania, New York, DC, Boston, Tucson, THANK and San Antonio. He also lectured at Connecticut Community College, the University of Miami, YOU Wake Forest Law School, Union University in Tennessee, the University of Colorado, Colonial Visiting Professors Williamsburg, Art Joukousky’s Sixth Form in Providence, Providence College, to the Alexander Cook Congressional chiefs of staff at Williamsburg, Budapest, Prague, the University of North Robert Gross Carolina at Chapel Hill, Raleigh, the National Council of History Education convention, Elizabeth Meloy Skidmore College, the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, and Martha’s Vineyard (with the Moshe Sluhovsky actor Richard Dreyfuss). In August he and Professor Jack P. Greene spent a month at Nathaniel Taylor Bellagio, Italy, a Rockefeller think-tank for scholars of various disciplines. In May he received an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from Providence College. During the year he ✶ served on the editorial boards of four of the papers of the Founders and wrote reviews for the New York Review of Books and the New York Times. VAZIRA FAZILA-YACOOBALI ZAMINDAR spends a grueling summer in to finish and submit her manuscript The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories, and the book is now forth - coming in early fall . She also really enjoyed teaching a seminar on the Partition of in fall , and the graduate colloquium with Engin Akarli in the spring, as it brought together her historical and theoretical interests in exciting new ways. 17 18 Prizes hi st y or n
– ews M under f S pr G A C and l or e am lar as m esents arj ter U J R K t J S C S P U K Ge R K S S LA a J C R C TH he th eri EF O O nd ie he pe h ks AR AR A A TEP H EB H e e h ni n t ue ori oler fu lat il N UR H e THE TE ra nde A esa i RI RI gradute can lt F e on’ ve on os t ATHA N LIA l E A E be ge RE er e i he STO STINA C C HA on rsi A pe N C Le L. r, ance s t H T. G. . A hapt st R p he Q s” Y Mer La Pr B J. t ake sh ar J. . hi M K o INE NI Ant y, A STOU D pa p ue ar Colins ne” N P A. . B ogram be ip” mp or es ATKI or A K E is er H. HE : y bar BE OU st chant MIA i S UDE st t al K of YOSK -S woman er E G. io h Weis Da . ONIGSR R it JACOBS A . e RNE paper i n GHTO NS t Th – S kh o y, TY LA Stae NO A CLARK ug Pr S Jr. n to IDHU i LK n mbiguo and . eo Marine ON in te r iz Riots M OWIT Z h f Re claim Pu DWIGHT O Priz or fo ter s Memor e fo dore majoring s” ” written N r in Failure r fo blic fo “ ON na ti on for “Pirat fo e fo Post “Law r for In r o in us Weld in r r “H f “St or te rn f Deba The “ th "Educat fo “M Delhi or ial fo co The “ American K St as ow e Navy uctrr es r es al f i and r ut, ashr “Creat lonia or atus n at io na in orality P “Co A “I and a un de r a te, remiu The An me Lega ” nd History “Prize n clas Ev angelis (dis)Or der nsumer for of ing P t ric Franc ebl Pet y Nov ursit ing l cy s a the st of Un de r an Sv ur m n H Ci assi ty an di ng Cas – d of en i in a Deliv eranc els um st Re is t S – Pr the K ism i o ived: ingle History, z of t gnment e ” i W volution a ens osher ry, n st an di inces: s and Amer s ” in Justice: aylnd” in ‘Market the a , and for : w in the Revison Personal Woma the Nation-S tae the it h junior Amer ng , ica” American a best Femins: in to Eighten P C Wa an Educator: a Pos an riz w outsandig nd hangi Revolutin ’: n” ica: paer em p r hi ch e, or American t-Conflic Histore of Dread: of to senior The ng ha si Hyistor ” is Politca w Pvation resr An dealing oman A aw The Centur ” thod Oxr s me The Uneasy on ar de d clas of history Family, Re rica Abolitns s co op e Econmy Fa Liberan tudent solutin with y : l Brown lou an nu al course and ra ti o the t who t in ly n volume 21 ■ fall 2007 David Herlihy Prize to the best student in Medieval or Renaissance History Lela P. Spielberg for “Veronica Franco and the Renaissance Courtesan”
The Claiborne Pell Medal for excellence in United States History
SAMANTHA M. SEELEY
The John Thomas Memorial Award for Best Thesis
NATAN T. ZEICHNER
for “Becoming the Vanguard: Student Activism and ‒ Popular Organizing in the Greater Sao Paulo Area During the Abertura Period of the Brazilian Military Dictatorship” Outstanding Honors Thesis
FRANCESCA P. BRADY for “A Hundred Years of Steadfast Savoir-Faire: The First Century of Miss Porter’s School
SHANNON M. CHOW for “Greatness: Nitobe Inazo ( – ) and Prewar Japan”
LELA P. SPIELBERG for “She is my Baby and I Think a Great Deal of Her:
Parents’ Voices in the Discussion of Mental Disability, – ”
PhDs Awarded
CANEDO, RICHARD (BA, College of the Holy Cross; AM, Brown) “Entertaining America: Vaudeville and the Middle Ground of American Culture, ‒ ”; history teacher, The Lincoln School, Providence, RI
DAVIES, JOHN (BA, Dartmouth College; AM Brown) “The Russian Technical Society and the Reconstruction of Entrepreneurial Culture in Late Imperial Russia”
MEYER, JAMES (BA, McGill University; AM, Princeton and Brown) “Turkic Worlds: Community Representation and Collective Identity in the Russian and Ottoman Empires, – ”; post-doctoral fellow, Harriman Institute, Columbia University
19 history newsletter
Graduate Program
This year was another exciting one for the a rigorous training in the mechanics of the Graduate Program. We continued to institute profession, including teaching experience, as well our restructured program, successfully adjusted as a good understanding of the theoretically to new policies of the Graduate School, won the oriented debates that preoccupy historians in appreciation of an external review committee, general. Two core courses of the new PhD and enjoyed our students’ achievements. program, namely the professionalization and Sixteen students received AM degrees in prospectus writing seminars, were offered for History, seven of them in the Master’s program the first time this year. Professors Vorenberg and and nine upon the successful completion of the Green worked hard, with invaluable input from first-year of their PhD studies. Three students our second-year students, to establish and received their doctoral degrees in May , harmonize these seminars. The workshop and two others will be eligible to do the same continued to serve as a forum where first-year by September . We congratulate these students hear different historians explain how students heartily. they go about choosing their subjects, doing their Our students in general continued to do research, shaping their interpretations and writing outstanding work as scholars and teaching up the results. The colloquium, as in the past, assistants. They won university travel and offered students the opportunity to study various dissertation fellowships as well as grants from approaches to history and the theoretical under - external agencies and foundations, which pinnings and implications of these approaches. included the Social Science Research Council, Furthermore, by bringing together students who Fulbright-Hays Foundation, the French intend to specialize in different fields, it provides government (Bourse Chateaubriand), University them with a comparative perspective and the of Tübingen, NYU Center for the Cold War opportunity to critically reflect on the relevance and US, the Radcliffe Institute, and John Carter and adaptability of various theoretical and Brown, Huntington and other major research methodological orientations to different epochs libraries. We are proud of their achievements. and regions. In addition to these core courses, An impressive group of seven PhD students we offered a range of regional as well as topical (selected from among the top % of gradual seminars, which offer students a chance to applicants) will enter the department in deepen their knowledge of the history of a specific September . Seven Master’s students region or to further develop their comparative (selected from among twenty-three applicants) insights on a specific issue of broad geographical will join them. We welcome these newest significance (such as “secularity,” “imperialism,” members of the department enthusiastically. “consumer culture,” and “sexuality”). Two years They will benefit from the experience and in a row now, the topical seminars have also insights we have gained in the implementation generated closer cooperation, dialogue and study of our restructured PhD program and groups among faculty members, enriching the graduate courses. department’s intellectual ambiance. Our new program and courses are designed to Our ultimate aim remains to help our students provide the first- and second-year students with become competent and enthusiastic young
20 volume 21 ■ fall 2007
historians who can impart their knowledge, to our graduate students and the capable understanding and love of history to their readers leadership of the History Graduate Students’ as well as students. Our new program provides Association as well. Our students make a vibrant us the means and perspective to accomplish this community of young scholars of remarkable goal, as the external reviewers of the department solidarity and intellectual vigor. have agreed enthusiastically. Finally, I would like to express my special In retrospect, it becomes amply clear that thanks to Professors, James Green, Joan Richards, Professor James McClain, our former chair, and Robert Self, who have served on the Professor Amy Remensnyder, our Director of Graduate Committee since . Their Graduate Studies in – , and other experience, vision, and commitment to the colleagues who have spent long hours to plan success of the program greatly facilitated my and institute the new program and courses task as the Director of Graduate Studies. I deserve our utmost appreciation. We need to am delighted that Professor Joan Richards has maintain and build on their achievements. accepted to take over the mantle. Our program’s The new policies of the Graduate School that stature will continue to grow under her guarantee five years of financial support to experienced and able leadership. students in good standing will enhance our Engin Deniz Akarli ability to attract first-rate students and help us further streamline our program. We owe thanks
The 26th William F. Church Memorial Lecture
Natalie Zemon Davis Henry Charles Lea Professor in History Emerita at Princeton and Adjunct Professor of History and Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto
spoke on
“’Liberty and License: Three Women of Colonial Suriname”
during the annual William F. Church Memorial Lecture on Tuesday, October 17, 2006
21 history newsletter
2006–2007 History Department Honors Recipients
BRADY, FRANCESCA A Hundred Years of Steadfast Savoir-Faire: The First Century of Miss Porter’s School
CHOW, SHANNON GREATNESS Nitobe Inazo ( – ) and Prewar Japan
CLARK, STEPHANIE The Evangelist and the Educator: The Abolitionist Philosophies of Theodore Weld and Francis Wayland
COHEN, JUSTIN Faith and Fallacy The Politics of Religion in Pre-emancipation Jamaica –
FIKE, JUSTIN The Divine and Material Sword: The Development of Holy War Ideology in Medieval Iberia
FOO, JANIS The History and Development of Anorexia Nervosa within The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, –
GLADSTONE, MICHAEL L’Ordre de Saint-Michel: A Failed Monarchical Institution in Ancient Regime France – 9
JENKINS, COURTNEY The House That George Built: The Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington, D.C., –
KAWAMURA, YUKO The Influence of Alcoholics Anonymous on Public Policy on Alcoholism –
KUDELKO, KAREN How They Survived: Personal Histories of Liberian Refugees
LAMM, KATHERINE Educating Citizens in a Changing America: Brown University, –
LAPLATNEY, ALLISON “The Repository of Infinite Possibilities” The Role of the Child in Nineteenth-Century American Spiritualism
MENDELSON, JESSICA Shadows on the Home Front: The Treatment of the Families of Missing British Soldiers –
NAGLER, JOHN Baptism in Helldorado Endicott Peabody in Tombstone,
SCHAEFER, JENNIFER Negotiations of Public & Private Spaces: The Family, the Press, & the Catholic Church during the Argentine Military Dictatorship
SEELEY, SAMANTHA That pattern of a husband, a warrior and a fine gentleman: Maine’s Revolutionary War Veterans and the Pension Program of
22 volume 21 ■ fall 2007
2006–2007 History Department Honors Recipients continued
SMITH, ARMINDA Round and Round They Go: The Rise and Fall of Rocky Point Park
SPIELBERG, LELA “She is my Baby and I Think a Great Deal of Her”: Parents’ Voices in the Discussion of Mental Disability, –
TURNQUEST, CAREY Pax Americana?: The Latin American Foreign Policies of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon
YOSKOWITZ, JEFFREY Creating a Kosher America The Orthodox Union’s Program to Reclaim Kashrut, –
ZEICHNER, NATAN Becoming a Vanguard: Student Activism and Popular Organizing in the Greater Sao Paulo Area During the Abertura Period of the Brazilian Military Dictatorship
Undergraduate Report
This is my last report as director of to presenting students with a challenging yet undergraduate studies. Over the past seven years, supportive intellectual environment. My I have been privileged to see some thousand esteemed colleague Howard Chudacoff once Brown students graduate with a history observed that, as a first year assistant professor, concentration and more than one hundred and he was “volunteered” to do freshman advising. fifty of them with honors in history. I am Walking to the orientation for faculty advisers, enormously proud of their accomplishments he was amazed to find that many of his most and have previously detailed many of those distinguished senior colleagues were going as achievements. What I want instead to emphasize well. Nothing better demonstrated Brown’s here is the remarkable care and love demonstrated devotion to its students. We hope that remains by our faculty. In the classroom, in thesis and true today…and forever. general advising, in office hours, and around campus, our faculty takes pride in its commitment Ken Sacks
23 Non-Profit History Newsletter Organization an annual newsletter published by the US Postage Department of History PAID Permit No. 202 Brown University Providence, RI Angell Street Providence, RI